David G. Patent wrote:
>
> Thanks to Alydar for rescuing my post on the Rag. board and
> putting it up here. I stand by every letter in that post and
> by my characterization of it here.
>
> As I said when I first posted here, I did not expect to
> change anyone's mind but I did hope to engage Jerry on some
> of his assumptions and have thus far been disappointed. I
> have heard no response on my question regarding the turf
> course last Saturday and what basis -- other than his own
> beliefs -- does he have for changing the variant a full 6
> points based on 2-3 hours of evaporation on a cool and cloudy
> day.
>
> As for dirt variants, I have never claimed that it can't
> change during the day. In fact, Ragozin does make
> adjustments for changes in weather, moisture, etc. and they
> admit it. But you only do it where you have evidence of some
> intervening act that could have a meaningful impact on the
> variant and a wealth of historical information on what the
> effect is. And since we're talking physics and chemistry
> here, the effects of moisture, etc. are demonstrable and
> consistent. I would wager that Jerry bumps his variants up
> and down even with the same changes prevailing depending on
> whether he thinks the horses should have run faster or slower
> than they did.
>
> One other misstatement by Brown where he says that 'groups of
> horses' don't do strange things. Who flunked statistics
> here? Groups do strange things all of the time. It's just a
> matter of probability. If 6 horses are each 80% to bounce,
> then they will all bounce about 25% of the time. When there
> are approximately 100-200 races being run every day in this
> country, and over 30,000 per year, you will see a lot of
> strange results.
>
> And please, HP, stop this nonsense of attacking me for the
> acts of others. It's a cheap and old trick.
>
> See everyone on the 6th.

TG--1. Let’s say I grant you for the sake of argument that all 6 horses were 80% to bounce (which is ridiculous—these were stake horses). Problem is, for your model to work, they all have to be 80% TO BOUNCE 6 POINTS OR MORE. There is probably NO stake horse that is 80% to bounce 6 points or more on any given day, but let’s say all were 50% to bounce 6 points or more (which is way, way too high). At that rate THE CHANCE OF THEM ALL DOING IT IS LESS THAN 2%. Incidentally, if you think you can find two older stake horses that are 80% to bounce 6 points in the same race I’ll take even money they don’t, even using Ragozin figures—as long as they are racing at the same circuits and distances as they earned their tops. Let me know.

2. I don’t know what track you were at, but it was sunny for the last few races, and windy before that. Again, ask yourself this—if the card had not included the Dixie or Preakness, what figures would Ragozin have assigned the grass races and the Schaefer? It should be obvious even to you that he would have no reason to believe the track was changing speed, and no reason to have all those stake horses running way off their tops. Which means either:

a. the track figures he assigned are wrong; OR

b. in all those situations where Ragozin doesn’t have (by your own and his standards) enough information—that is, an independent event (another race) to tie the variant to—he must get it wrong.

There is no third choice.

3. If historical information, knowledge of intervening acts etc., were sufficient, all of us would make variants simply by getting a weather report and groundskeeper info. But again, the entire premise of doing figures the way we do is that previous figure histories are predictive of future figures. If that assumption is not valid, we can all go home—because not only could you not make variants, you couldn’t use historical figures to predict outcomes and bet.

You’re an intellectually honest guy. How about posting requesting Friedman put up the 13th race on Preakness day, which they seem somehow to have forgotten? Or at least a post explaining why you won’t ask?



TGJB